


279. glass cage

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [91]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 11:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8159860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “Do you know why the DYAD took me in, at age seven?” Helena asks.Sarah slows, stops. Her back is still turned. Helena can’t see her face.“My sister burned,” she whispers. “There was an accident. A terrible fire.”





	

When Helena’s sister walks into Helena’s office, Helena knows her immediately. Knows her. She had guessed it from the moment the whispers of _Sarah Manning, fertile, lost, daughter, lost_ had sprung up around the DYAD – had realized it just then, that the DYAD had lied when they’d told her sister had burned in a fire. But she couldn’t quite believe it. Not until now.

“Sarah,” she breathes, when Sarah steps closer. She’s mistrust in a leather jacket, scowling. She looks so tired. Helena – who has not intentionally reached for anyone in twenty-one years – wants to hold her. Instead she splays her fingers over the edge of her desk, sucks in a breath, and says: “My name is Helena. I’m here to transition you to self-awareness.”

“Right,” Sarah says with a scoff of a laugh, and sits down in the chair across the desk. She folds her arms across her chest, defensive, says: “I’m s’posed to be impressed by this? Another version of me, only this one’s _blonde_ and so ‘course I’m gonna heel now, right?”

Helena feels the urge to tuck her hair behind her ear, pull it behind her shoulders, make it unobtrusive. It is very long, a white-blonde shock in the low light of this office. She doesn’t. She sits down across from Sarah, trails her fingers back and forth along the desk. She keeps darting her gaze up to Sarah, just to hold her for a moment in her eyes. She looks back down.

“I,” she says, and then stops.

When she looks up, Sarah is looking at her with something like pity. She probably expected an opponent. She expected a monster she could fight, an eye she could spit into. She didn’t expect Helena, who just wants to hold her.

“The DYAD has looked after me since I was seven years old,” she says, which wasn’t what she’d meant to say at all. She’d meant to say _the agreement defines mutual disclosure_ and other words with too many syllables that don’t actually mean anything. Instead she’s staring at the desk and saying as many words as she can that aren’t _Sarah, they lied, Sarah they told me you burned and they were the only safe place for me in this entire desolate world_. “They offered me a home. A family. They have our best interests at heart.”

_They._

_Our._

“Yeah, I don’t believe you,” Sarah says. “Black bags ‘n monitors, that’s our ‘best interests’? That’s bullshit, is what that is.”

“We want to keep you safe,” Helena says, words honest like a stab wound. They hang nauseous and bleeding in the air.

(Here is the problem: _we_.)

“I was safe before you lot started screwing with my life!” Sarah says, standing up out of her chair. _Wait don’t go_ Helena thinks and she stands up, mirrors her. The desk is between them. It’s made of glass; they’re both in it, reflected, a warped mirror. “You want to keep me safe? _Leave me the hell alone_.”

“Sarah,” Helena says desperately. “If you don’t agree now the DYAD will take more drastic measures, you know that it will. Please. It’s easier if—”

“ _Easier_ ,” Sarah snarls. “Piss _off_. You want to take drastic measures? I’ll burn you all to the ground, see if I don’t.”

She turns on her heel and heads for the door, heroic, triumphant, the protagonist of every story the DYAD never let Helena read. She blurts: “Do you know why the DYAD took me in, at age seven?”

Sarah slows, stops. Her back is still turned. Helena can’t see her face.

“My sister burned,” she whispers. “There was an accident. A terrible fire.”

She watches Sarah’s shoulders stiffen. Sarah is frozen so still that one push could send her toppling. Helena keeps talking, soft and easy. “I dream about it sometimes. I remember her. I tried to go back for her, Sarah. I wanted that more than anything. To protect her.”

“Sorry for your loss” bursts, forced and sour and horrified, from Sarah’s throat. Then her feet are moving and she is running running running for the door. Helena could call her name, but what would it mean? Nothing.

Instead she just stands there, and watches Sarah go. She is the only one of the two of them reflected in the glass.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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